I'm Not Perfect but I Keep Trying
by Lunalove25
Summary: AU. Alone and broken, she is forgotten. A mistake never meant to be born. Amy spends her life thinking she has no purpose until she's thrust head-first into an all-out war. When both camp and ship are threatened, can she protect her newfound friends? Even this simple task turns grueling as tensions fly and she's left to wonder who's really there for her. T for language


**I wasn't going to post this again until the end of the week, but I decided what the hell and did it! I'm much more pleased with this than I was with my first version, so I hope you like it! Leave your feedback on what you think of Amy's new traits! **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing except for Amy. All other characters belong to Rick because they're too awesome for me to come up with.**

Amy's POV

Amy strode up and down on the sandy shore, trying to collect her thoughts. She barely noticed the sun sinking lower and lower into the shimmering blue ocean. She was too busy naming things she hated. Her "coping" method never helped for too long, but the momentary relief it brought was appreciated.

Her footprints, going back and forth and back and forth in the sand, were getting washed away just as fast as she made them. Either the tide was coming in, or -the more likely reason - her dad was upset at her. That wouldn't be surprising. It seemed like he always had a reason to be mad at her, whether it was because she skipped sword training or because she was arguing with Triton. Again.

Now that was the perfect child - always on time for meetings, never missed training, never flooded the entire east coast of a country - while Amy was the exact opposite. She was a rebel, and proud of it. But there were times where she wished her father would praise her, show her the same affection that he always seemed to have excess of for her half-brother.

Closing her eyes briefly, she lifted her head toward the setting sun, letting the soft ocean breeze tousle her hair gently. At last she opened her eyes and cast them towards the sky; the sun's rays shimmered upon the rippling waters of the ocean below, the faint glimmer of stars just barely peeled through its radiant light. It was evening- and time to return home. Back to what had drawn her to the serenity of this place. Stupid war. Stupid Gaea. Stupid rules. What was a life anyways if it was spent chained at the expense of another's will?

She reluctantly stepped into the surf, which covered her ankles in gritty ocean water. Amy's pondering about whether she could bribe Triton to cover for her was cut off by a loud bark coming from the water. Her spirits lifted and she plunged into the chilly water, swimming until she reached the source of the noise. Her sea lion, Merliel -the only friend she had in that enormous underwater palace that Amy thought of as a prison - barked happily as she came closer, and allowed Amy to approach her before darting forward in the water and jabbing the girl in the stomach with her nose. Amy rubbed the spot gingerly but laughed; that was just Merliel's way of saying hello.

She petted the animal, which responded by nuzzling her like a dog. The creature's deep brown eyes gazed into her own sea-green ones before speaking.

"Sorry if I was a bit rough."

Amy shook her head. "It's fine. I need to 'toughen up' apparently."

"You? Toughen up? You're the one who took out that sea serpent last week and saved Triton's sorry-" Merliel stopped when she saw Amy's glare. "What? It's true!"

"I know that, but please try not to bring it up. He's still pissed that he got saved by a girl." Merliel dove under and Amy grabbed onto her best friend's flipper, allowing herself to be pulled underwater with the current.

"So? What's wrong with that?"

"To them, everything."

The two continued their journey in silence after that, until they reached the gates to her father's kingdom. The mer-guard let her through at once; Amy was quite well known. As soon as she and Merliel got through the gates, she felt her friend urge her to go faster. Amy released her friend's flipper and let the current carry her, faster and faster toward the palace, away from the crowds until - WHAM!

Amy fell back, bubbles rushing past her in a scattered current, before realizing she'd swam right into a flagpole. Her cheeks turned red as people turned and stared at her. She got up and tried to brush it off as something that happened every day, ignoring the sharp pain in her skull. It didn't work.

"Alright, alright, nothing to see here! Move along!" Merliel shouted at the crowd, which began to disperse. Took them long enough. The sea lion then turned and swam over to the human, who gratefully accepted her friend's helping flipper and steadied herself as the bubbles began to let her stand on her own. Merliel waited for this before saying, "You ok?"

"Yeah." Amy struggled to remove the signs of emotions from her face before facing the palace almost directly in front of her. "I'm fine."

Amy was a freak. Most of the demigods she knew would complain on and on about ADHD, because it would "get them in trouble in school", or whatever. They didn't know how lucky they were. She didn't know why - maybe it was just a freak thing - but it seemed like she was the only demigod _ever_ to not get ADHD. And when you're a child of the Big Three, that can be a problem. ADHD was another term for "battle reflexes", and they were what kept heroes alive in a fight. Since Amy was not blessed with them, she had to create her own. This was not easy. Her father made her train _every_ day to "keep up her agility and become stronger" and crap. She, however, knew that she didn't need it. She used her wits and speed to keep herself alive, not that stupid training.

Not only that, but she also had dyslexia. Not the normal kind – no, _that_ could never happen. She had to be able to translate Ancient Greek. Now, that may sound like a cool thing, but Ancient Greek is a freaking dead language. So although it'd be handy 3000 years in the past, that didn't exactly apply in modern times. The one language that most people spoke, however, she couldn't read for crap. English gave Amy a migraine with one glance.

The Fates hated her. She was sure of it.

As she walked into sword practice, she immediately saw Triton in the center of the ring. He was fighting off four mermen and practically dancing around their attacks. Amy rolled her eyes. _Oh, sure. He can do fine here, but put him up against a sea serpent and see who goes running. _She smirked as the memory of Triton hiding behind a coral reef when the serpent had barely moved came into her mind. At that moment Triton blew the mermen back and sent them crashing into the wall, causing Amy to wince in sympathy. He strode right up to her, completely ignoring their yells of pain or the crash that sounded when the poor swordsmen hit the concrete wall. He had a smug look on his face.

"You're late."

Amy shrugged indifferently. "So?" Triton got all up in her face.

"_So_, Dad's gonna get mad at you," he snapped.

Amy scoffed and replied, "What else is new?"

Triton rolled his eyes and muttered something to himself while Amy turned to go find her sword so she'd at least have a chance of defending herself this time. _Great_, she though, _16 years of putting up with this crap. How much longer am I going to have to deal with this asshole?_ Lost in thought, she accidently bumped into someone and when she looked to see who it was, she paled. It was her father.

"Amelia," he said, using her full name. Amy wanted nothing more than to hide behind a patch of seaweed, yet she stood her ground. Looking strong, even when hiding behind a wall of fear, was something she'd worked hard at perfecting.

"Hey, Dad. I-"

"I thought I told you not to be late again." _There he goes._ She should've know that it was coming.

"Yeah, about that-"

"I expect more from you," he said.

Amy was trying really hard to not give in to her frustration, but failed. She had never been very good at hiding her emotions, so she snapped: "No! No, you expect more of _him_!" Amy gestured angrily at her half-brother, causing bubbles to rocket through the water and up to the surface. "Don't you get that we are _nothing_ alike?! You make me train, but don't you know that I don't learn crap from it? You don't know anything about me, yet you control everything about my life!" She breathed heavily for a second after her rage, trying to compose herself. Her father just stared at her.

"Start practicing." Then he left.

That was it? No more of a lecture, just an order? In all of her 16 years, that was an extreme rarity to her. There was the sound of a sword being drawn behind her and she turned to see Triton, who was brandishing his weapon in a way that reminded her of a pirate and smirking like a lion that had been gift-wrapped a sick gazelle.

"You heard him," he said. "Start practicing. Prepare yourself!"

Amy grabbed her sword from the rack beside her.

Yeah, this would be _fun_.

Amy hated sword practice. If she could find whoever thought it was a good idea, she would give them a serious bitch-slap. All it did was give Triton an excuse to beat her up.

It wasn't like she tried to make it easy for him. Amy did everything she could, used everything in her power to avoid his blade. It still found her and by the time they took a break her arms were covered in cuts, the blood from some of the deeper ones staining her favorite blue shirt. Although the water was already beginning to heal them she could see the scars forming. She hated them because they reminded her of her failures. And of Triton. She wasn't sure which was worse.

"Are we _done_ yet?" she asked, trying to make her voice sound extra whiny so he'd get annoyed and want to leave early.

"You're _kidding_," Triton said, glaring at her. "Your form is horrible, you can barely block and you clearly need to do muscle training because I don't know how you can hold that heavy sword with your skinny arms." It was Amy's turn to glare as he continued. "It's going to take a lot more work, _Amelia_," he said, imitating their father. "You need to start coming to practice on time and stay for longer. Obviously you aren't practicing enough." A bunch of Nereid had gathered around the arena and were watching the events unfolding. Oh, and of course they were swooning over Triton. Their expressions as they stared at him while he flexed made Amy want to puke. Seriously, what about him was attractive?

"Now," Triton commanded, "back to practice."

Amy couldn't take it anymore. "I've been practicing just like you taught me but it isn't sinking in, ok?!" she yelled. "It hasn't clicked like you said it would!"

"You haven't been practicing enough!"

"Maybe you're just a terrible teacher!" Triton grabbed her shirtfront and yanked her so they were face-to-face.

"_No one_ talks to me that way," he growled.

Amy didn't back down. "_Obviously _someone should."

Amy soon realized that she shouldn't have let her guard down. Triton, who still happened to be armed, took advantage of her distraction and brought down his sword, giving her a cut in the side that could've been mistaken as a claw mark from a monster. Amy yelled out in pain and Triton shoved her, then stood over her as she tried to coordinate herself, smirking victoriously. The water started to heal her wound but someone – it didn't take a genius to figure out who – stopped it abruptly, like she was fighting for control. Triton crossed his arms and looked bored while Amy placed a gentle hand over the cut as she stood in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

"Well?" Triton asked, waiting for her rebuttal.

Amy glared at him as she started to half swim, half walk off. _Focus on something else,_ she told herself as she got further away. She tried to think good thoughts: _world peace, rainbows, One Direction getting hit by a tank_. They didn't help. She could hear Triton's laughter behind her and the giggling of the Nereid.

"Triton…" Amy said, stopping and turning to face him again.

"What?" he said with a laugh.

She flipped him the bird as she turned to walk away again. "Go fuck yourself." There was a huge amount of gasping from the crowd but Amy didn't stay to see their reaction. She turned and swam back to her room.

Merliel was waiting for her when she got there.

"Hey!" she said. "How'd it g-" She stopped when she saw Amy's various injuries. "Oh. My. Gods. What happened?!"

"Triton happened." Amy sat down on her bed and watching her cuts begin to heal again. Merliel swam around, searching for something and tossed a baggy of ambrosia at Amy, who held onto it for later. Merliel looked she was trying to avoid staring at the cuts, but Amy could tell she was seriously shocked. It wasn't like Triton didn't hurt her in some form usually, but this was the most violent he'd gotten in a while. Finally Merliel burst out: "You look like he's been using you as a knife sharpener!"

Amy nodded. "And that's not even the worst part." She carefully removed her hand to reveal the slowly-healing slash. Merliel gasped in horror as Amy looked closely at it; it was pretty bad.

She moved on to examine the palm of her hand, which was stained red from the blood. She rubbed it on her already-ruined shirt until the stain came off her skin and took of the bloody, torn-up shirt and threw it in a corner. She grabbed the nearest thing she could find: a familiar orange t-shirt with black writing on it. Amy put it on, surprised that it still fit. It had definitely been a while. Then she took off her sneakers and pulled on her combat boots instead. She threw the sword at the door, where it embedded itself just above the doorknob and grabbed her preferred weapon. It was smaller than her father's trident, and not nearly as powerful. It couldn't summon the blue electricity or whatever it was that her dad's weapon did, but Amy didn't care. She didn't need it to. It had a clear base and dark-blue prongs, with swirling designs that looked like waves going down the shaft. She gripped the shaft and it started to shrink and bend at her touch until it became a pair of blue Beats headphones. Amy grabbed her iPod off her nightstand, plugged the headphones into it and shoved it in the back pocket of her shorts, placing the Beats around her neck.

"You're leaving, aren't you?" Merliel spoke up suddenly, making Amy jump. She turned with a guilty expression towards her best friend.

"I-I have to. I can't stay here, Mer. I have to find my own destiny, and it sure as hell isn't down here." Merliel swam towards her and hugged the human.

"I know. I'm just gonna miss you," Merliel said.

"I'm gonna miss you, too." The two friends broke the hug and began to pack a backpack. It didn't take long and soon Amy was looking around her room for what would hopefully be the last time.

"Wanna swim there with me?" Amy asked.

"Only if we can take the long way," Merliel responded with a grin. Amy nodded, smiling to herself and the two of them swam out.

Their journey was silent, partly due to their desire to avoid being caught and partly because of the impending good-bye. They reached their destination all too soon and human and sea lion faced each other somewhat awkwardly.

"Well… I guess this is it."

"Yeah. Promise you'll try to come back and visit sometime?" Merliel asked.

Amy smiled. "I promise. Take care, Mer."

"You, too, Am. Kick some monster ass for me." Merliel jabbed Amy in the stomach again, making her laugh before heading out to sea. "I will!" Amy called out, watching her friend disappear beneath the waves. She turned to the bank of the shore in front of her.

_Well... here goes nothing. _

**I hope you all enjoyed it! I had a lot of fun writing it, especially Merliel. She's fun! :D I hope no one minds the cursing. Well, hope you enjoyed and let me know your thoughts!**

**Credit goes to SapphireSirenSkies27 for writing part of this (you might be able to see the difference in our style but I doubt it- it blended pretty well) Anyways, until next time! **


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